Pastor Brian Martin: Hey everyone, welcome to the Calvary Callback, a podcast where we take a deeper dive into the weekly sermon at Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester, Minnesota. I’m your host, Brian Martin, and I’m here today with Josh Spencer, who preached a sermon titled The Thud, looking at 1 John 3:16-18. Mr.. Josh, how are you?

Josh Spencer: Doing great. How about you?

Pastor Brian Martin: Doing well. Are you making good life choices today?

Josh Spencer: Doing my best.

Pastor Brian Martin: I feel like you usually do.

Josh Spencer: Shucks.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, all right, so, you know, Josh, I would imagine compared to somebody like Kyle who people hear preach a lot and because of that, feel like they have some connection to him and know him a bit and probably know some of his story just because of him being hired not that long ago and those kinds of things, um, people probably know you a little less than some of the other voices they might hear. So give us a little of your like, Calvary history. How did you find your way to Calvary? How long have you guys been here? All that kind of stuff.

Josh Spencer: Okay. You want the long or short version of that story?

Pastor Brian Martin: Well, you know, I don’t know. Whatever you want to share, I guess. Yeah, the podcast is only so long. I guess I don’t know what long means to you, but…

Josh Spencer: Fair enough.

Pastor Brian Martin: If I give you one of these, which means nothing to the listeners because they can’t see what I’m doing…

Josh Spencer: Oh, I see what you’re doing.

Pastor Brian Martin: …Just cut it off.

Josh Spencer: That’s right. No. So I guess the short version of the story is I found Calvary by chasing my wife halfway around the country. Uh, so we met in Memphis, Tennessee. Uh, I was ready to propose well before she moved to California. But the way things worked out, she moved to California before I got there. I decided I was going to go up, propose, she said yes. While she was in California, i was going to move there, we can get married, see what the Lord has for us next. I flew up there October 20th of 2017 and she said yes. So I uprooted from Memphis, drove, and drove everything I was going to bring with me to Northern California. My boxes, as it were. And my…

Pastor Brian Martin: yeah, yeah.

Josh Spencer: And, um, she said yes. Uh, so I was like, okay, we’re going to get married. But then she took a job at Mayo Clinic about as soon as I got settled.

Pastor Brian Martin: As one does.

Josh Spencer: Yeah. So we didn’t actually get married until July 2019, at which point I moved to Rochester, Minnesota, and she was already going to Calvary. I decided not to fight that, and in hindsight…

Pastor Brian Martin: We got her first, and then you were just the consolation prize afterwards.

Josh Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. She was here about a full year before I was.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Well, I mean, all kidding aside, I mean, I definitely encourage spouses to go to church together. And I’m not even kidding because sometimes that happens where spouses go to different churches. And I’m not saying there aren’t circumstances for that, but I think if you ever can go to church together, it’s probably a really good thing. It’s probably helpful and important. So that’s great. Well, hopefully you feel like she chose well. Both with you and with the church she’s attending.

Josh Spencer: One more than the other.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll let the listeners figure out which one is which. Oh, boy. So, okay. So then you guys have been here. You said since when?

Josh Spencer: 2019. Since May 2018. For her.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Just before all the Covid.

Josh Spencer: Correct.

Pastor Brian Martin: You remember church outside?

Josh Spencer: I do. Yeah. The circles in the parking lot.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. I will, I don’t know that I will ever forget. I think it was Dan Wortman’s second week here, and he’s preaching with an umbrella and it’s snowing. Do you remember that? Yeah, that was wild. Yeah. I will almost never forget that.

Josh Spencer: There are many wild things about that season.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s not let’s not reflect too much on that. I think Covid was the dumbest time. Uh, it’s just so frustrating. But. All right, let’s talk about your sermon a little bit. So you titled it The Thud, which is, uh, fun to say. Re-explain that to the listeners. What does that mean? Why, why build your title around that?

Josh Spencer: You know, it’s interesting to think of where titles come from anyway. I actually started out with a very different title and an entirely different sermon. And sometimes.

Pastor Brian Martin: That happens.

Josh Spencer: Originally, my title was going to be True Love. And of course, when you say true Love out loud, what comes to mind?

Pastor Brian Martin: I mean, I guess romance, romance like that kind of love is what I would think of. Is there something more specific you’re fishing for here?

Josh Spencer: For me, when I say true love, I think love. Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s not where my brain goes. But it’s fine that it’s where yours goes.

Josh Spencer: Princess bride, Princess bride to mind. And suddenly I had a sermon that was conceptually just built all the way through Princess Bride. This was my illustration and theme.

Pastor Brian Martin: Swamp rats and everything?

Josh Spencer: Nope, didn’t go quite that far.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, that would have been a deep cut.

Josh Spencer: It. Yeah, it was a little bit of a deep cut, and I felt like it was a little sticky. Yeah. Um, and I don’t feel like it carried the tone of what the passage that I was preaching from.

Pastor Brian Martin: That sounds like a good edit, then.

Josh Spencer: Well, it wasn’t so much an edit. I was kind of just, I had what I had. And there’s this thing that I say, which I brought up in the sermon. Jesus is my heartbeat. Discipleship is the thud. And all of a sudden, that verse that we have, well, you know, if you close off your heart to your brother in need, then how can you say God’s love abides in you? Just thinking about, okay, if God’s heart, if God’s love is within us, that heartbeat, that thud,  this is going to be the effect. This is going to be the repercussion that comes from what’s happening within us. So the thud becomes almost an illustration for what is animating us, what is happening within our heart, what’s driving us, and that the effects are the thud.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. You know, when I heard you say it, I was reminded of, um, a really adorable thing that happened to me once when I was working with small children. Uh, I was, I was a volunteer, I think I was a high school kid. And, um, and the preacher, whoever was preaching, I don’t even remember who it was now, but whoever was teaching this like kids ministry lesson talked about like Jesus knocking on the door of your heart. And this little probably five year old raises his hand and they’re like, yeah, Jimmy. And he goes, I don’t, how would Jesus fit in there? Because, you know, kids are so literal. And I was like, yeah, you gotta be careful with your metaphors when you’re teaching the gospel to children. It’s, it’s pretty great. It’s pretty great. I feel like Jack might ask that question.

Josh Spencer: Oh, he’s asking doozies.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah, so many good ones. Oh, I love it, I love it. Well that’s helpful. Um, all right. So one of the things you claimed was that Jesus in your sermon is that Jesus is the standard of love. And I, I think that’s great. Uh, I agree with you, obviously, but in what ways do you think it’s true that Jesus is the standard of love? How does he exemplify it? Or how is he himself the standard of love?

Josh Spencer: Yeah, it’s a great question to have. I mentioned at the beginning that we have so many definitions of love, right? And this is actually a place that I ended up cutting out of the sermon, but, you know, wrestling with other conceptions of love. Secular conceptions and all of our conceptions outside of Jesus, I find tend to become one way or another, selfish. It becomes somehow self-serving. What Jesus does with the Last Supper is he says, hey, here’s this. You guys have done Passover for thousands of years at this point. It’s always been about rescue from Egypt, um, because of Moses. But now I’m going to take this and make it about me. Well, what he also does is he sets the standard in that John 13 verse that we bring up that the way that I’ve loved you. This is going to be the way the whole world knows that you are my followers. That you love one another as I’ve loved you. That you’ve seen the way I’ve loved. And I’ve tried to make it very clear this isn’t a .selfish love. It can’t be a selfish. And if it is, then it’s not mine.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s a serving love maybe.

Josh Spencer: It’s a serving love. Right. And it’s from this place of humility as I bring up, right. Humility and then sacrifice from that place of humility. Because unless we have that first step of humility, which you see in Jesus emptying himself completely, then it will be self-serving to a degree. And I think that’s where Jesus is the standard, and he makes himself the standard. He points to himself as saying, hey, it is going to be my love that’s operating out of you. 

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. The reason the cross is the greatest act of love of all of history is because it’s the greatest act of sacrifice of all of history, right? You know, it was completely I don’t really like this word, and yet it fits here. It was completely unfair that Jesus died the way that he did. A completely innocent man died for other people’s sins. That’s wild, right? But that’s ultimately sacrifice. That he willingly does so.

Pastor Brian Martin: Pretty incredible. I love it. Well, to that point, um, I really enjoyed the point you made where you said, I’m paraphrasing, but, uh, laying down your life in a moment of heroism is different than laying down your life daily to love and serve someone else. Compare and contrast those for me. Which is harder, and why?

Josh Spencer: I think what comes out in the sermon is that the latter is harder. Uh, not that the first isn’t a significant and difficult thing. Laying down life. Hey, you have to have a lot of confidence.

Pastor Brian Martin: It feels scarier, maybe.

Josh Spencer: Yeah, yeah, this is it, right? Life and death. What do you believe? Are you really willing to go there? But the day in and day out makes it so much more difficult because there’s a finality to the first one. There’s that, okay, life is over, this is it, right? My, all of my my cards are on the table. There’s so much more life to live and there’s so much more opportunity to… I think the expression of the difficulty of it, of a living sacrifice, is it can climb back off the altar. And I think that’s true here is that, hey, you know.

Pastor Brian Martin: It’s a great point.

Josh Spencer: We’re living sacrifices. We’re loving, and yet we get back to this place of selfishness. We get back to the place of, hey, what about my kingdom? What about what I have going on here? Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Josh Spencer: So I would say the latter is the bigger challenge. And it’s really what comes out in the sermon.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And because I think a lot of people can rally and be brave, for lack of a better term, in a moment, but to be consistently so, to consistently lay down your life, it just takes more discipline. It takes more effort. It takes more, um, I mean, it takes more time, frankly, it takes more energy. And that can be really hard, you know, and I think, I think a lot of times people struggle in relationship because they don’t realize that it requires sacrifice. You know, there’s so often I feel like I’ve talked to a lot of married people who feel like, but I’m not getting what I want. Well, that’s not the paradigm. It’s, it’s really about serving each other. Right. And who can out, you know.. The happiest marriages are the ones where each of the spouses is trying to outserve the other one, you know, and not in a competitive way or in a silly way, but you know, that that’s their perspective. It’s like, it’s not, it’s not just what can I get out of this? That’s a consumer relationship. That’s the kind of relationship we have with a vendor, right? It shouldn’t be the kind of relationship we have in covenant, right? And that’s a completely different thing. Not that it’s only marriage that we sacrifice for. We sacrifice for friendship. We sacrifice for, you know, our children, all of the, all of these relationships, even for our church, which, or we should. And I think people struggle with that, right? They don’t, they often don’t think they should have to sacrifice for their church. They think their church is there to serve them. And it’s like, no, we’re all the church. Like, yeah, some of us get paid to be here, but we serve each other, right? I just…

Josh Spencer: More an understanding of what is the church, right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Josh Spencer: So it’s all about these levels of relationship that we have. And we realize we can either use those relationships from a place of self service or of love. And it’s really one or the other. There’s, there’s nothing in between.

Pastor Brian Martin: Right, yeah. It’s a huge piece. It’s a huge piece. I also loved, uh, I think I got this one as an actual quote, i like replayed it, so I think I got it right. You said we aren’t called to lay down our luxuries, we’re asked to lay down our lives. That’s really well said. I appreciated that. Um, so let’s, let’s get real here though for a little bit. Like I assume that’s probably something that you would say you’re still learning, but also something you’ve learned something about, right? So how did you learn this idea and how has it played out in your life and for your family? What do you think that looks like?

Josh Spencer: So that is half of a two parter statement that I have in there, because the other half of it as well is that sacrifice isn’t giving up a surplus, but it’s giving of ourselves. Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Um, yes.

Josh Spencer: I would say over the past little over a decade now, I’ve been doing a deep dive into a study of the kingdom of God, just really trying to understand the ins and outs of this.

Pastor Brian Martin: Do you mean the thing or the phrase?

Josh Spencer: Oh, the thing. Well the thing that the phrase describes.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, yeah, I know, I just yeah, I didn’t know if it was like a word study or if you’re, yeah, okay, i’m with you now.

Josh Spencer: Well, what is this thing that’s talked about here about this, right? When you see it throughout Scripture, you see it portrayed in such a way, um, where this is what’s being invited to, right? Change your hearts, metanoia. Repent because the kingdom of heaven is near. Here’s what we have. Here’s the experience and how do we live it out? And Jesus invites his followers, hey, if you want to come after me, you must take up your cross and follow me. What does it mean to take up your cross and follow me? If you want to save your life, you’re going to lose it. Um, he makes it very clear if you want to be top of the power structure, James and John want to be sitting at his left and right in Mark chapter 10, he makes it very clear, hey, it’s the rulers of the Gentiles who lord it over them. But within my kingdom among you, the one who wants to be greatest must become the least, right? You become the servant of all because even the Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a sacrifice for many.

Josh Spencer: And so you see this reversal of the power structure. And I think that what you’re describing and you talked about, hey, it’s tough to sacrifice for the church and people within the church, and it’s tough to sacrifice within marriage because we struggle so much with the idea that I am… If I have enough to give, then I can and probably should, but I have a certain amount where I’m at zero and nothing is expected of me at that point. I can give when it doesn’t hurt,  but if it hurts, it’s wrong to even ask me to give. And I think we misunderstand what Jesus is calling us into. He’s saying, hey, I’m asking you to give everything and it’s going to hurt, but you need to understand the hurt is worth it. And here’s a struggle in marriages. I imagine many of those conversations you’ve had. You have people who aren’t willing to get to the point of giving until it hurts, right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Josh Spencer: Or maybe they felt a little bit of that hurt and they don’t feel that something’s reciprocated. And so now there’s bitterness. Now there’s well, I will if you will. And again, this becomes a very self-serving illusion of love, but not love.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Josh Spencer: Does that answer your question?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah,  it’s one of those things when we hear it, we’re like, yeah. And then you start thinking about how it actually applies to your life and it gets real, real fast. And I think, I think we all have to be confronted because our default position is always selfishness. It just is. And so we have to do the work to not be selfish. Like, you know,  I’ve used this metaphor before, but you remember those like, um, like clowns that you could like punch. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Josh Spencer: The pop up clowns?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Like they’re weighted on the bottom. And so like, I think of like the upright position of those clowns being selfishness. The only way to get it down is like constant effort. Do you know what I mean?  It’s a goofy illustration.

Josh Spencer: Sure, I’m curious where this illustration is going.

Pastor Brian Martin: Well, it’s not going anywhere. I’m just saying it takes energy to not be selfish.

Josh Spencer: Like when selfishness pops right back up. Right? Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: So left to our own devices, you know, we’re always going to be selfish. It’s like the end of Kings, right? Where it’s like everybody did what was right in their own eyes.

Josh Spencer: Yeah.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. So selfishness, right, is ultimately it’s our default position.

Josh Spencer: Absolutely.

Pastor Brian Martin: Oh, we’re all messed up, screwed up and deranged. It’s very humbling. So you told this charming story about Jack. For anybody who doesn’t know, Jack is Josh’s son. Um, and would you say 4 or 5?

Josh Spencer: He’s four. Yeah, he had just turned 4 at the time i was telling the story.

Pastor Brian Martin: There you go. Yeah. And Jack is like, Jack’s my buddy. So like Jack is 4. Do you know what I mean? So he’s…

Josh Spencer: He’s very 4

Pastor Brian Martin: He’s very 4, um, which, which is one of my favorite things about him. So you told the story about the toys and the giving and he wanted to keep it. Here’s my question. Where do you see yourself in that story?

Josh Spencer: Oh, I see myself all over his position of it. And this has actually been so much of my role as a father to him, is that I see so much of myself in him that I feel that almost as he’s going through life and discovering things, I see myself in that place. Right? Um, maybe unfairly at times, but I feel like there’s this point where, uh, the spiritual illustration that comes out of that, I go, oh, wow, that part of him that doesn’t really want to let go, doesn’t really want to share or be generous. I don’t want to share and be generous. I don’t want to give up my stuff. Right. I have my my preferences, my kingdoms, my desires, all of this I know I should. And as Christians, we’re told all of these things. But then we have to ask, what is our why? Right?

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah.

Josh Spencer: I can, but what is my why? And if my why isn’t strong enough, I won’t. I’ll do what I have to, to look good enough and follow the rule. But I’m going to get by with as much as I can and give bare minimum. Which again isn’t love.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah, it is amazing how our kids reflect us back to ourselves in so many ways, right? Yeah. And yes, in some of the fun ways and cute ways and whatever, but also in those really real ways that remind us like, oh, this is, this is just a less socially refined version of my exact heart posture. And you’re like, oh yeah, I wonder where they learned that from, you know? Oh, for better and for worse. But yeah, that’s good. So, um, you did something I thought that was really cool and interesting. In your benediction, you connected this idea of, um, you know, love and service. Uh, and you connected it to the main idea of the series. So just unpack that a little bit more for us. How does the idea of loving others, even when there’s like a personal cost, connect to the idea of walking in the light, which is the series we’re in? Like, how are those things related? I think they are. And I think you were making that connection, but how so?

Josh Spencer: Yeah, this is something that I felt like got highlighted by drawing in the Matthew 6 illustration, Jesus uses the, uh, where is your treasure? If your treasures on earth, moth and rust are going to destroy it, thieves are going to break in and steal. And if it’s in heaven, then here’s something that is incorruptible. And I say in the sermon, hey, you have this singular eye, you have this single focus on the kingdom of heaven. The light of the kingdom is now shining into you. You’re now filled with light, right? You have this posture and walking in the light, again Jesus is our standard of love. He is the one who’s animating us. It’s his spirit within us that is giving us the ability to do any of these things, to, to get away from my selfish self and actually know what love is. Not just because he’s shown me, because he’s living it within me. And so walking in light is exactly that. Walking in him, keeping in step with the spirit and allowing him to illuminate the way. Instead of the alternate. We have the darkness, the selfishness, the n word, the covetousness, the greed. Yeah. All of the other defaults that we’ve already talked about.

Pastor Brian Martin: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah. It’s really the pastor I grew up under. He used to use the phrase like the spirit in us and through us. And I always really appreciated that, like, because it’s not meant to only be in us, right? All these things you’re talking about, the way we love is service is sacrifice. Then it has to be the spirit through Us, too. It’s both of those things. And I just think that’s so essential to our understanding of what it means to walk in the light, which ultimately means to walk in the ways of Jesus, which is where we all want to be as disciples. We want to be good disciples, you know? Yeah. Um, I don’t want to be, in my better moments, i don’t want to be the guy that gets into heaven by the skin of my teeth. You know, I want it to be, um, and again, not on my effort, but, uh, in I want to be one who’s fully relying on the Lord and easier said than done, but something we need to remind ourselves of all the time.

Josh Spencer: This is an intentional tie back to earlier in our conversation, but there’s a piece of the kingdom that is meant to be contagious.

Pastor Brian Martin: Mhm.

Josh Spencer: There’s a part of this where the kingdom, the spirit in you, is supposed to be not just coming through you, but interacting with touching others. And by this, the kingdom spreads. Jesus describes it as that little bit of bacteria, a little bit of yeast that gets put into the bread and just transforms the bread. But at the same time, sin gets described as leaven too by Paul, right? A little leaven leavens the whole loaf. And so you have two kingdoms operating. Both of them are contagious. But you see in Romans 5 that the kingdom of God is exponentially more so and overtakes and dominates the kingdom of darkness.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. We know how it ends. You know, we know who wins in the end. We’ve seen the end of the movie, as it were, but it doesn’t always look like it in the moment, in our own hearts, in the world around us. You know, it might look like we’re we’re losing, but we know how it ends. And so we need to act like that. I think we know the final outcome.

Josh Spencer: Jesus.

Pastor Brian Martin: Jesus. Yeah. It’s the Sunday school answer because it’s often the right answer, right? So, okay, sadly, Calvary’s going to lose your family to move across the country here. You guys have some big adventures in front of you. And I mean, happy for you guys. I’m excited for you guys. Sad for us. Um, I, I felt like might be an interesting opportunity. I mean, you’re not going to get a chance to talk with everybody, uh, you know, in the church before you guys go, but you have quite a few people listening. Now, what would you want to say to your church that has been with you and served you in this season that you’ve served in and served well? Um, what would you want to say? I’m putting you on the spot a little bit.

Josh Spencer: No, no, that’s that’s completely okay. So I started following Jesus in 2001. And, um, my family, my biological family is very fractured and quite distant. Mhm. Um, just always has been, is today. And so when I started going to college, the, the church that I was connected with there in Hutchinson, Kansas, uh, that became my family. That was my family unit. These were the people with whom I’m relating, the people I can rely on, the people who rely on me. And there’s this, this reciprocal giving. Same was true when I moved to Memphis. Same was true when I moved to Northern California. And now here in Rochester, Minnesota. Calvary has been my family. And so the folks who’ve come around me, the folks who loved me and supported me, the folks in whom I’ve been able to invest and to be able to love and to be able to give and to serve. Um, my family is here. And that’s one of the reasons that this decision was, was so heavy and so difficult for me when I was preaching about the box and things inside the box, I realized for me, uh, Rochester, Minnesota, and y’all that I love so much are in that box. And it’s not that you’re bad, it’s just that it’s easy for me to hold on to an inappropriate level and not be willing to be moved as God is moving me. So I just want to say thank you all for being my family here. Um, and it’s a reminder to me that anywhere I go in this world, the kingdom of God is moving and I have family anywhere I go when I have other people, brothers and sisters, who call on the name of Jesus. And that’s true of all of us. But it’s been true for me here for these past eight years. And I’m extremely, extremely thankful.

Pastor Brian Martin: Yeah. Well, we’re thankful to have had you. And, um, and the beautiful thing about having family is there’s always someplace to come home to, you know, metaphorically and literally. So, um, yeah, many blessings to you guys on your, on your next adventures. It’s going to be, it’s going to be something. So. All right. Well, thanks for your time, brother. I’m gonna bring us to a close here. Thanks for joining us on the Calvary Callback. We hope this time was an encouragement to you. And whether you’re a part of our Calvary family, if you’re listening from somewhere else in the world, we invite you to join us in our mission to pursue passion for Christ and compassion for people. For Josh Spencer, I’m Brian Martin. We’ll catch you next time on the call back.